If you kill an animal but don’t bring it to the church to be sacrificed, you’ll be cut off from your people.
The same goes for anyone who eats blood. (I’m guessing we’re talking about raw food and not vampires.)
Day of Atonement:
Aaron’s sons died, and God told Moses to tell Aaron not to go to the “Holy Place inside the veil, before the mercy seat that is on the ark” (what?). God was planning to hang out in the church tent I guess and Aaron would surely die unless he came inside in this specific way: wearing a holy linen coat with linen underwear, a linen sash, a linen turban, and bringing with him a bull, two rams and two goats. Blah blah blah, kill the animals, throw some blood around, do this once a year to atone for all of Israel’s uncleanness.
Bodily discharges:
If a man has any kind of bodily discharge, he and everything he touches is unclean. Anyone who touches anything the dirty man has touched needs to wash their clothes and take a bath and they’ll only be unclean until the evening. When the discharge clears up, the man will wait seven days and then wash his clothes and take a bath, and then offer some sacrifices to God.
If a man has an emission of semen, he needs to take a bath and also wash anything the semen touches. If he’s with a woman and it happens, they both need to bathe.
If a woman is on her period, she will be in her “menstrual impurity” for seven days. Anything she touches during that time becomes unclean. And if she has sex with a man and he gets blood on him, he’ll be unclean for seven days.
13. Leprosy:
Suspected lepers must be brought to a priest for examination. If it is indeed leprosy, he shall be pronounced unclean. If not, the priest will shut up the patient for seven days and examine him again after that time. If he’s still not a leper, the priest will shut him up for another week. He’ll be pronounced clean after that.
Lepers are required to wear torn clothes and have long hair. They have to live alone outside the camp and walk around with mustaches and cry out, “Unclean, unclean.” Dude, that sucks.
14. Cleansing lepers:
A priest will bring the leper two birds, cedarwood, scarlet yarn and hyssop. The leper will kill one bird and then dip the other bird in the blood of the dead one. The priest will sprinkle the blood on the leper seven times and then pronounce him clean. The leper will wash all his clothes, shave off all his hair and then take a bath. He can come into camp after that, but he’ll have to live outside his tent for a week. On the seventh day, he has to shave, wash his clothes and bathe again. On the eighth day, the former leper should sacrifice a few sheep. The priest will put some blood on the leper’s ear, thumb and big toe, and then sprinkle some oil around. I think God is just playing some weird game of Hokey Pokey.
Original text:
Unclean women:
A woman is unclean for seven days after giving birth to a boy. On the eighth day, the boy will be circumcised, and the mother will spend the next thirty-three days “in the blood of her purifying.” Whatever that means. During that time, she is not allowed to touch anything holy or go to the church.
If she has a daughter, she will be unclean for two weeks and spend sixty-six days in the blood of her purifying. Because, of course, girls are evil.
After her purifying is complete, she will bring a lamb and a pigeon or turtledove to the priest for a sin offering. “Then she shall be clean from the flow of her blood.”
Things you’re allowed to eat:
Things you’re not allowed to eat:
There are a lot of stupid rules here. If you get bored, you can just skip down to the fun cartoon.
4. Sin Offerings:
If you break one of my commandments, bring an animal to the tent and kill it. Bring some of the blood to the priest, and he’ll dip his finger in it and he’ll sprinkle it on the floor seven times. He’ll put some of the blood on the horns of the altar of incense, and pour out the rest at the base of the altar of burnt offering. He’ll remove the fat and the entrails and the kidneys and the liver, and burn them all. Take the rest outside to the ash heap and burn it.
You’re going to follow this procedure for pretty much all types of unintentional sins.
5. Things you’re not allowed to do:
Hear a public adjuration to testify but refuse to testify
Touch an unclean thing (carcasses of unclean wild animals, livestock or swarming things)
Touch human uncleanness
Utter a rash oath to do evil or good
If you do any of these things, bring me a lamb. If you can’t afford a lamb, two turtledoves or pigeons will do. If you can’t afford that, bring me some flour.
Guilt Offerings: If you’re feeling guilty about something, bring me a ram or its value in silver shekels.
6. If you deceive your neighbor in any way, you’ll pay him back whatever it is plus a fifth of its value. Also, bring me a ram.
And tell Aaron and his sons this is how I want the offerings done: Do burnt offerings on the heart of the altar all night until the morning. Wear your linen garment and put the ashes next to the altar. Then put on something else to take the ashes outside.
For grain offerings: eat whatever you don’t burn for me. All your male descendants can have some. It’s holy stuff.
When a priest is anointed, he’ll give me a tenth of an ephah of fine flour. Make it with oil on a griddle.
7. OMG, more laws about offerings…
This is mostly stuff you already know, but you might not know that you’re not allowed to eat the flesh of a sacrifice if you’re unclean. If you do, you’ll be cut off from your people.
If you eat the fat of any animal or any blood, you’ll be cut off from your people.
Original text:
1. Burnt Offerings:
God told Moses: Here’s the deal on Burnt Offerings. Tell everyone that animal sacrifices need to come from the herd or the flock. If the offering comes from the herd, it must be a male without blemish. It should be brought to the entrance of the tent. You put your hand on the head of the bull, then kill it, and then Aaron’s sons will throw the blood against the sides of the altar. Then you’ll cut up the animal into pieces and Aaron’s sons will make a fire. Wash the entrails and legs with water, but burn the rest on the fire. I like the smell. If you bring me a goat or sheep, you’ll do the exact same thing.
You may also bring me turtledoves or pigeons. The priest will bring it to the altar, rip its head off and burn it. The blood will be drained out the side of the altar. Remove the feathers and throw them in with the ashes beside the altar. Tear it open by its wings and burn it. I like the smell.
2. Grain Offerings:
Fine flour only. Put oil and frankincense on it and bring it to Aaron’s sons. You’ll take a handful of it and burn it because I like the way it smells, but Aaron and his sons are going to eat the rest.
If you decide to make me some bread, make sure that stuff is unleavened and made of fine flour and covered in oil. Also if it’s cooked on a griddle. You know what, no matter what form you make it, just make sure it’s fine flour and covered in oil. And don’t forget to burn it because I like the smell. Oh, and make sure you put salt on everything, too.
3. Peace Offerings:
If you’re bringing me a peace offering, kill your bull at the entrance to the tent and have Aaron’s sons throw the blood on the side of the altar. I don’t care what you do with the rest of it, but I want the entrails and all their fat, the kidneys with all their fat and the liver. Have Aaron’s sons burn it because I like the smell. But if you bring me a lamb, then I want the tail as well.
Remember, you’re not allowed to eat fat or blood. It’s all mine, nom nom nom.
Original Text:
God was hard up for money, so he asked Moses to ask the people for gold, silver and bronze, along with yarns of blue and purple and scarlet, fine linen, goats’ hair, tanned rams’ skins, goatskins, acacia wood, oil, spices, onyx stones and, you know, whatever else they had lying around. He also wanted Moses to have the people build him a house and an ark.
Now, this is not a flood-escaping ark. This ark is a box, and God wanted it to be 36 inches long, 27 inches wide and 27 inches tall. He wanted it to be made out of acacia wood and overlaid with pure gold. “When it’s done,” God said, “make a cover for it out of gold, and do it up with gold angels and stuff. Then you’re going to make a table and overlay that with gold, too. And when it’s done, make me some bread and serve it to me on that table with gold dishes. I’m also going to need a golden lampstand. Make it pretty, with flowers.”
“Oh, yeah,” God said. “I’m going to need a tabernacle made of fine linen, and I want pictures of cherubim woven into it.” Then God talked for like an hour about how exactly he wanted this tabernacle to be made. Then he told Moses how he wanted his house to be arranged. (Some pretty good blueprints can be found here.)
“When all that’s done, you’re going to need to make me an altar. Make it out of acacia wood and cover it in bronze. And the tabernacle is going to need a court, I think twenty bronze pillars ought to do it for the south side. Twenty silver pillars for the north. And I’m afraid of the dark, so I’m going to need an oil lamp to always be burning nearby. Aaron and his crew can take care of that.”
Moses wrote down all of God’s rules, and then he woke up early the next morning and built an altar at the foot of Mount Sinai, along with twelve pillars to represent the twelve tribes. He got some people to make sacrifices at his altar, and then he took half the blood from the sacrifices and put it in basins. He threw the other half at the altar. When all the people had gathered, he read to them from the book he’d just written, and they agreed to do whatever God said. Then Moses threw blood on the people. Oh, gross.
Moses and Aaron got a couple guys named Nadab and Abihu and seventy elders of Israel, and they all went into the mountain to hang out with God. After some food and drink and partying, God asked Moses to come to the top of the mountain so he could give him some stone tablets with the rules on them. Moses told everyone to wait for him, and then he went up the mountain. As soon as he went, a cloud came along and covered the peak for six days. It looks like Moses wandered around for those six days, and on the seventh he finally found God hanging out in a fireball. Moses wound up not coming back down from the mountain for forty days.
